


Would That It Were So Simple

by terebi_me



Category: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019)
Genre: Bi-Curiosity, Bisexual Male Character, Bisexuality, Blow Jobs, Cigarettes, Cliff Booth Is A Good Friend, Dirty Talk, Emotional Porn, Emotionally Repressed, Explicit Sexual Content, Frottage, Gay For You, Hand Jobs, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Insecurity, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Resolved Sexual Tension, Rough Kissing, Touch-Starved, Vignette, let me help you, love is confusing, typical Rick, wise Cliff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-18 17:10:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21530380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terebi_me/pseuds/terebi_me
Summary: Cliff does his best to counsel Rick on bisexuality, as he sees it. Sexy bonding time between friends who are becoming more than friends.
Relationships: Cliff Booth/Rick Dalton
Comments: 16
Kudos: 131





	Would That It Were So Simple

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celinamoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celinamoon/gifts).



> My first OUATIH fic, written on the fly at work. Title is literally the line that just happened in the movie I happen to have on right now, HAIL, CAESAR! - it works as well as anything! Takes place maybe a year before the events of the film, maybe

It's about 9 o'clock at night, at Rick's house on Cielo. The neighborhood is quiet, and the house is quiet, except for the soft, choked moans shaking out of Rick Dalton's throat as he fucks his best friend's face.

Even in the midst of this, Rick is anxious, even if the anxiety is hardly detectable around the overwhelming urgent totality of sex, of all those sensations consuming him, even as he is being consumed, with Cliff's mouth all the way around him at the root, with his balls on Cliff's stubbled chin, with Cliff sucking the dickens out of him. But because Rick's hips thrust despite his best efforts not to – it was downright rude to push back, to treat somebody's face like a pussy, even though... even though. But Cliff won't let Rick pull away. He matches the tempo of Rick's hips, letting Rick's cock slide along his lips towards out, but then Cliff flows forward again, back in. And he doesn't seem to mind any of this. Cliff is making no sign of trying to get away. To stop this. This – insanity. This delicious accident.

Rick couldn't even remember how they got here. There'd been some horseplay, some wrestling, and then someone bit someone – Rick really can't remember if he bit Cliff, or Cliff him – but the biting just kept going, and in a minute their lips were biting against each other, exchanging bites, exchanging pushing tongues. It wasn't a kiss. They didn't... kiss. Not really. But somehow, as naturally as breathing, Rick's cock found its way into Cliff's mouth, and their clothes came off, and they went to bed and it continued.

"God _damn_ it." Rick put his palm against Cliff's forehead, wanting to push him away, but all the while arching his back, rubbing his dick against the ridges of the roof of Cliff's mouth. To Rick's surprise, Cliff moans loudly, grabs Rick’s ass, and pulls him in deeper, forcing Rick’s cock towards his throat, squeezing the head of Rick's cock as he actually manages to swallow. "God damn it, Cliff," Rick mutters again, seeing stars behind his closed eyelids, his fingers combing through Cliff's hair, scratching the scalp with his fingernails, circling his thumbs in the shells of Cliff's ears. "You can't _do_ that..."

Tightly, Rick grasps Cliff’s jaw and pulls his mouth back, away from Rick's body, but Cliff just follows, keeping the cock firmly in his mouth, and returns to his sucking rhythm. As if directed, Rick’s hips follow, and soon Cliff isn’t moving at all, just breathing in huffs out his nose as Rick fucks Cliff's mouth as carefully as he can.

He can't help it; his body is in command now. His libido. Rick speeds up and deepens his thrusts. Harder. Rick is thrilled and ashamed. He looks away from Cliff, down the edge of the bed, only to see Cliff's bare toes curling, clenching the sheets. He is holding back hard, too. "God _damn_ it..." Rick gasps, "your fucking _throat_... you _can't_..." 

Cliff moans again, the loudest yet, and his whole body shudders, and that takes Rick over the brink. No choice but to let go, and everything unravels inside him like film slithering too fast through a projector.

His first pulse goes off in Cliff’s mouth. At last, Cliff lets go and edges away, muttering happily, “Shit,” and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. But Rick can see Cliff swallowing, and Cliff looks him in the eye and licks his lips, his mouth closing with his perpetual pout even more enhanced, plump and red from sucking.

“Jesus, Cliff,” Rick says, thrilled and ashamed, and a little sickened, which thrills him even more, twists him up, tears him into little pieces of confetti.

Cliff relaxes onto his back next to Rick, a stiff tent in the crotch of his boxer shorts, palming his hard-on for a moment. But almost right away, he reaches over to the bedside table and grabs a pack of cigarettes. He lights two in his mouth, hands one to Rick, grinning. “Well, all right,” Cliff says approvingly, going back to circling his free hand around his erection. A puddle of wetness rides the poking-out tip, and Rick can smell the pre-come and the sweat, and his own sweat, feel the moisture from Cliff's mouth cooling on his slack balls.

Rick feels dizzy and mixed-up. “How could you…?”

“Oh, it’s easy - you just put your lips together, and blow.” Cliff laughs, free and comfortable, but Rick seems horror-stricken. He starts to curl in on himself, hugging himself, the hand holding the cigarette shaking.

“I mean, how can you... let me... do that to you?”

Cliff snorts. “You ain’t did nothin’ to me; I started it,” he retorts, the lazy smile never leaving his face. 

Rick sits up, smoothing his hair out of his face, ashing his cig. “I just never… never knew that about you…” 

“Well, it ain’t the most popular-makin’ activity in the world… although I wonder why not. Ought to be able to add it to your resume. Pro'lly get you some jobs, out here.” 

“But — but — you-y'were married.”

“Yeah. You prolly will too, at some point. Don’t change nothin’. Can’t marry _me_.” Cliff smiles very sadly and shrugs. “Bet you would if you could, though!”

“I ain’t like that,” Rick protests sharply. “I ain’t queer.”

Cliff scoffs. “Boy, you’re in pictures, in Hollywood, California. Ain’t like this is _rare_." When this fails to get Rick's shoulders to unclench, Cliff changes conversational tactics. "You never fooled around with a fella before, huh?" Rick shakes his head, his expression puzzled and thoughtful. "Hell, ain't nothin' to be worried about. Least o' our problems right now.” Cliff goes quiet, and Rick has no further reply. His nude body, dimly lit from the light spilling in from the hallway, seems to pull yet tighter, all that tension that they'd been trying to get rid of returning. He'd only had a few drinks earlier, with a dinner he'd actually eaten some of, and there's almost a visible thought bubble, like in a comic book, hovering over his head with a picture of a bottle of Jack Daniels in it. 

Cliff is not yet in the mood for more booze. Later, sure, but now... He pulls off his boxer shorts and tosses them across the room, then lies back down next to where Rick sits hunched over, desperately smoking. Cliff wraps his arm around Rick's hips and gives him a firm hug, nothing too namby-pamby or unsure. “You really needed that,” Cliff says kindly, kissing the top of Rick's thigh.

It does relax him a little. “I - yeah, maybe I did.”

“When’s the last time you got head?”

“I can’t damn remember,” Rick mutters.

“Oh, you can remember, all right.” Cliff pokes him, but when Rick shakes his head again, he lights a new cigarette off the cherry of his old one. “Ain’t nothin’ to it,” Cliff adds. “You just need to _want_ to do it.”

“Uh-a-am I gonna be queer now?” Rick's voice, tiny and scared.

Cliff gives another warm squeeze, and takes his arm back. “No more than you were when you woke up this morning. Ain't nothin' changed. You ain’t never gonna make _me_ not love pussy.”

“Well, n-no, of course not...”

“You love pussy, don’tcha, Dalton?”

“Naturally.” Rick is indignant. “Of course.”

“Think about it all the time? Just crave it? Want it? Want to just fuck it, all day, every day?”

“Of course... I'm a man, ain't I?”

“But do you, though? Is it really pussy you love? Just pussy? Or is it fuckin’? You sure liked my mouth all right. Just wanna fuck a hole? It don't matter who or what it is?"

"No, it... it matters. It matters a lot."

Cliff's hands find him again, warm palm on the small of Rick's back, another hand stroking up his leg from the knee to the thigh. Cliff rubs his mouth gently against the protuberance of the pelvic bone at the crest of Rick's hip. Not a kiss, more of a damp open-mouthed breathing, a tasting. His voice rumbles against Rick's skin. "Maybe just ... wantin’ to be inside somebody. Someplace hot... and tight.”

“And wet,” Rick adds importantly. He is dizzy again. Cliff takes the lit cigarette from Rick's hand and stubs it out in the ashtray, follows it with his own newly-lit one; he has other priorities right now.

“Sure, sure. Wet. A pussy or a mouth. Just a hot, tight, wet hole, right up against the body, all the way inside, right?”

“...Jesus, Cliff.”

“Gets wet. Feels good. You make it wet. You can always make it wetter. Tight and sucking on your johnson... like, you know, like this.” Cliff's lips enfold the jut of skin and bone, and draw inward.

Rick shivers all over, shaking cigarette ash on the bedsheets. “Oh, fuck, you quit that, now, you’re makin’ me want to come. Again. Shit, I just got off; I can't come again. I can't even get hard again. Why does it feel like this?”

“Is it what I’m doing, or the thought of what I’m doing? The thought of how it feels? Is it me, or is it just how it feels?”

“I, I don’t dream about _boys_ , though, Cliff. Men. I ain’t inclined that way about men. I don’t, like, _watch_ men. I'm not goin' down to Muscle Beach to look at the beefcake. Ain't that required? I ain't attracted to 'em. I don’t look at 'em and have... _thoughts_...”

“You don’t? I sure do. When you just look at ‘em and admire.”

“I don't, though, Cliff. I don't. Sometimes... sometimes I want to be other men, though, but not fuck 'em.” Rick stares at Cliff, who has taken his hand off Rick's leg and returned it to his own cock, dark and twitching and rigid against his flat belly. He only squeezes himself roughly, at the base of the shaft, holding back, holding back to keep petting Rick, to keep talking to him in that low, soothing voice.

“How about having them fuck you? How about just getting close to ‘em, being nearby, close enough to touch, maybe not touching but wantin’ to? How about just lookin’ in their eyes?”

“And b-bein’ j-jealous. Wantin’ to be like them. Less like m-m... like me.”

Cliff suckles a rosette into Rick's skin, adding a little light chewing, hoping he'd leave a hickey, and continues his murmured litany, not as though he isn't paying attention to what Rick is saying, but not letting it stop him, or slow him down. “Or just likin’ em. I seen you jealous. You act so two-faced, so sweet and nice to their face, and the minute they’re out of earshot you just look mad as thunder and you start talkin' shit. I heard what you said about that Jim Stacy.” 

“Get out! Fuck that.”

“Don’t act like you ain’t noticed how pretty he is. Li’l skinny man with a cute caboose, like a girl, you just wanna sling your arms around his waist and pick him up. And then put him... where?”

“Jesus, Cliff.”

"Put him on my lap. Wouldn't mind that at all."

"Ha, ha! You're so full of shit."

Cliff now has Rick's cock in his other hand. He's got cocks in both hands, and he's sliding up against Rick, forcing Rick to lie back down beside him, bringing their bodies together. And Rick relaxes into a puddle of laughter and cool skin and flesh, and Cliff rubs his lips against it.

“You wanna fuck Jim Stacy? Hell, I wanna fuck him. I wanna bend him in half and make him scream and then neaten him up and send him back to his momma with my load drippin’ out his hole. Give him some reason to remember me.” Cliff slides his knee between Rick's, and lightly kicks his legs open, and settles his own cock into the groove of Rick's groin, moaning as he makes contact. 

Rick manages to purr and stutter at the same time. “He, he _does_ remember you, Cliff; we talked about you, he thinks you’re all right, but you could never double for him because you ain’t skinny enough.”

“Not to mention that I ain’t leavin’ your side, not to ride no horse for no Jim Stacy. I’m _your_ shadow, buddy.”

“I _respect_ Jim Stacy.”

“But I’m the one who lets you fuck him in the mouth. You’d never fuck Jim Stacy in the mouth, wouldja? If he’d let you, would you?”

Rick chuckles, tenatively returning the touch, a hand trailing up Cliff's scarred back. In Cliff's hand, Rick's cock twitches, still awake, somehow; awake again. “Jesus fucking Christ, Cliff. Why you gotta talk like that?”

“Maybe because I just got fucked in the mouth with a hard, fat dick.”

“Why you let me _do_ that to you?”

“ _Let_ you? Boy, it takes all I got to not just knock you dizzy and help myself to you, since your head’s all full of rattlin’ dice and ain’t nothin’ make sense up there, you ain’t got no sense of even what you like, or what you want, or what you’re feeling when you’re lookin’. I’d let you fuck any part of me you wanted. I would let you do whatever you wanted to me; I just want you touchin’ me. I just want to be touchin’ you. Excitin’ you, thrillin’ you, gettin’ you off. Taking you down a little bit. Giving. It feels good to me to give to you.” Cliff pushes Rick's hand towards Cliff's cock, demanding more touch, and Rick wraps his hand around Cliff's dick as if he isn't sure what to do with it. " _Grab_ it, you fucking pricktease."

It renders Rick breathless. “You-you-you want to, to fuck me, Cliff? Is that it?”

“Hell yeah, I want to fuck you, Rick Dalton. Now maybe that’s the difference between you and me. I know what’s happenin’ to me when I look at you and I feel somethin’. I _know_ what it is I’m feelin’. I might be kept up nights, but it ain’t me tryin’ to figure out what I want outta you. Maybe sometimes I can’t sleep because I can’t stop thinking of what I want to give to you. To _do_ for you. I don’t even need to be your favorite; I just want ... to be near you, buddy. I want you to feel good. Make this life a little easier for you. A little more possible. And I ain’t no faggot, ‘cos I ain’t never known no faggot loves pussy as much as me. And you ain’t no faggot, either, Rick.” Cliff paused thoughtfully, teasingly. “I don’t think.”

Of course, Rick falls for it. “I ain’t!”

“No, no, now, calm down. You ain’t. All right. I’d still want you, though, even if you was. I don’t care what you are or even what you think about yourself; I want to be right here with you, as long as you’ll have me.” Cliff watches calmly as a tear rolls out of Rick's eye, down his temple and into his hair. Without hesitation, Cliff kisses it away, and licks the next tear, and the next, as soon as they fall. His hips arch his hardness into the pulse of Rick's groin. Rick's other hand cards through Cliff's hair, their faces close. Lips close. “Now, you want me to get gone, I’ll get gone. I ain’t never gonna ask you to do nothin’ you don’t want to do, and I ain’t gonna beg for you to keep me around. I respect you, Rick Dalton, I respect you as a man, and you get to call your own shots in life.”

“H-hell that’s fuckin’ ironic to say to a goddamn actor...”

Cliff laughs easily and holds Rick tight. “Fuck, I can’t talk good,” he says. “I’m done sayin’ my piece. We ain’t gotta talk about it no more. I’m gonna shut up. You need to shut me up.”

He lies perfectly still, waiting, until Rick moves his head just a fraction, just enough for their mouths to meet, and it is no meaningless stroke this time, but lips pulsing on lips, their fingers finding each other, interlacing, holding tight. 


End file.
